la bella vita.

As I sit in my apartment on Via del Mascherino, one block from Vatican City and the pillars of St. Peter's Square, I grabbed my dose of HannahKaty.com. Even while I am in the most amazing city in the world, where there is over 2,000 years of history on my doorstep, this blog helps me to put life in perspective.

First off, things started to be put into perspective for me when I was on my flight to London. I cannot fall asleep on planes just I just lookout out my window and read my book for 7 hours. It was nighttime at this point and I looked out the window and the moon was just so bright and full and unlike anything I had ever seen. I was reading Eat, Pray, Love, which is an amazing book to help you put your life into perspective, and it was especially good for me because I was reading the section about Italy, and I was going to be there in a couple of days. Things just started to make sense to me, and I realized that I have to do what I have to do because it is for me, not for anyone else. No one else can tell you who you are, and you are in charge of your own density. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen.

Now, to what inspired me to write about this today, was when I read Hannah's blog about we are told what it means to be beautiful in magazines, in movies, about how outward appearance is what really matters, not what is on the inside. Personally for me, I have struggled with this issue for as long as I can remember. I cannot remember the last time that I really didn't care about how I looked on the outside, and have taken extreme measures to "fix" this. Including when, and people who knew me two years ago saw this change in me, I lost about 70 pounds in one summer, now that may be something to be proud of it was not done in a healthy way. I worked for six weeks this summer. Before I started working, I went to physical therapy and rode my bike almost everyday. Then when I started working I did basically the same, but with work thrown in the middle, so not has much control over when I could work out, and I had joined the gym at this point too. Then camp ended and I had three weeks until I had to move back to school. So for these three weeks, I woke up, had a bagel, rode my bike for three hours, swam for two hours and went to the gym for an hour everyday for three weeks. I lost thirty pounds in those three weeks.

I loved the attention I got when I got back to school, at this point I didn't care how I got to this point, I was just proud of myself for getting there. And for the few months that followed I had swimming and was eating, but burning so many calories in the water, it didn't matter. I look at those pictures today and get so mad at myself for letting go of that, and how I felt then. But, lately, I have been a different person. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have a plan, a purpose. And I have the best friends that anyone could ask for, and even though 8,000 miles separate us right now, nothing has changed. That is the most amazing feeling in the world, and it has nothing to do with my appearance. I am happy with who I have become on the inside, and while I do hope to become healthier just to have a healthier lifestyle, I don't care to ever do that to myself again.

Putting one aspect of your life in perspective can put everything in perspective, and when someone tells you that it is okay to be who you are, no questions asked, no judgements made, life can become a smooth ride.

So, here I just wanted to personally thank Hannah for your amazing words of wisdom and for helping someone like me realize that it is okay to be who I am and it is okay to share this story even though while I was typing it I just wanted to press delete everytime something seemed hard to admit.